A few notes about how I've cataloged the following: Directors are labeled under their most commonly known name (example: Aristide Massaccesi will be filed under Joe D'Amato). Films are listed under their most commonly known titles with other common alternate titles in parenthesis (example: City of the Living Dead (aka The Gates of Hell)).

Thursday, January 3, 2013

There’s an episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” where Larry
David – in hopes of winning back his wife Cheryl – agrees to do a reunion show
for “Seinfeld.” While filming the show, Michael Richards is waiting to hear
back from his doctor on whether or not he has Groats Disease, and he complains
to Larry that he just doesn’t think he can be funny with this diagnosis hanging
over his head. Larry tells him he knows a guy that has beaten Groats, and he’ll
get him to talk to Richards about it. When Larry’s sidekick/moocher-that-won’t-leave
Leon does Larry a favor by pretending to be that someone, he convinces Richards
that all he needs to do is wear his lucky hat, and the Groats will go away. So,
the next scene they rehearse for the reunion show, Richards (as Kramer) is
wearing this ridiculous hat. Jerry Seinfeld and Julia Louis-Dreyfus break
character and laugh hysterically because of how ridiculous it looks, advising
him that he can’t wear the hat because people don’t want to see this version of Kramer, they want to see
the guy they remember; the guy with the wacky hair.

Why did I just start a review of Sydney Pollack’s downer (in more ways than one) of a movie Random Hearts with this example from David’s show? Because Harrison Ford has this earring that he wears throughout Random Hearts that is so incredibly distracting that it reminded me of the conversation Seinfeld and Dreyfus have with Richards about his hat. This is not the Harrison Ford I remember. I know a silly little thing like an earring shouldn’t take me out of the movie, but I just couldn’t help myself: scene after scene I found myself paying more attention to Ford’s ear than the other stuff happening on the screen.

And that’s really one of the problems with Random Hearts: I was distracted by
little things like that because there just isn’t anything all that interesting happening
in this dour, dour movie. Oh, Random
Hearts didn’t have to be dour; no, this could have been a decent melodrama about
two confused, frustrated people looking for answers as to why their spouses
were cheating on them. However, the whole thing just kind of sits there, inert
and lacking any kind of emotional conviction about its characters and the
truths they discover about their deceased spouses and each other.

The premise of Random Hearts is set up nicely for a
typical Sydney Pollack film, by which I mean the primary metaphor that we’ve
talked about throughout all of Pollack’s films – male/female relationship as a
metaphor for opposing world views – is right in play (as is his penchant for
making movies with big stars). The plot concerns William “Dutch” Van Den Broeck
(Harrison Ford), an Internal Affairs Sergeant, and Kay Chandler (Kristin Scott
Thompson), a Republican Congresswoman, and how their respective spouses had
been cheating on them. However, the twist of Random Hearts is that Dutch and Kay have no idea their respective
spouses were cheating on them until news of plane crash hits TV and airline
officials show up to inform them of the bad news. This leads to the two finding
out that their spouses were on the plane because they were meeting up for one
of their trysts. Of course, this leads to Dutch and Kay falling in love (sort
of). The latter part of the story is held off for a while as we wait to see how
Dutch and Kay will react to the news that their spouses were cheating on them.

The idea isn’t bad; it lends itself to the type of melodrama
that Pollack admired from the Golden Age of Hollywood. However, as the film
progresses, we see Dutch – in between a horrible subplot concerning a crooked
cop played by Dennis Haysbert – investigating why his wife was on the plane and
how his own personal investigation is affecting his work. This, unfortunately,
is the primary point of view for Random
Hearts when Kay’s story of running for office, and how her personal
situation affects her work, is much more interesting. Had Pollack swapped the
point of view, I think Random Hears may
have worked; instead, the director chooses to follow around the mopey Dutch as
Ford gruffly mumbles his way through one of his worst performances. However,
Ford isn’t the only problem. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a problem. As I mentioned
in the opening, there were little things he did – choices he made as an actor
that include keeping that earring in – that were just baffling to me and didn’t
showcase the quiet actor so good at burying emotions like he did in Witness. I realize his character is
mourning in his own way, but there are scenes with his Internal Affairs partner
(Charles S. Dutton) where the only reason we have to believe that he cares
about him so much is that they’re partners.

Nothing in the
film has given us any insight into Dutch as a person, so we have no way of
feeling anything for his character. Why doesn’t he mourn or cry (I understand
people mourn in different ways, but why not just one little quick piece of exposition
letting us know that Dutch and his wife had problems because he internalizes
things)? The point of view is all off in this film. Ford’s character seems like
he’s hurt by this, but we’re never allowed to see why. I mean, what was it about
his marriage that is keeping him going with the investigation into why she was
cheating on him? Because the way Dutch reacts to all of this is as if he’s more
interested in finding out the identity of the person she was cheating on him
with than the fact that she’s dead. We’re never allowed to know – either through
exposition or just Pollack letting his camera linger long enough on a scene for
Ford’s face to do the talking – what Dutch is feeling. There are so many scenes
that needed to be re-edited or altogether expunged in order for the film to breathe
a little bit and allow the actors to create characters. And so, yes, the acting
here by Ford is a big problem, but the editing is just frustrating.

Random Hearts is
cut together so oddly. There are moments where it feels like the film is really
getting some momentum in scenes between Thompson and Ford – especially in a
nice moment towards the end of the film where Kay and Dutch share some quiet
moments at a cabin – but then the Dennis Haysbert subplot acts as such an
annoying interloper. I was never able to get fully engaged in the primary relationship
between Kay and Dutch – a prototype we’ve seen in almost all of Pollack’s films
– because of the way other, less interesting, story elements involving Dutch
kept getting in the way. Random Hearts is
based on a novel (by Warren Adler), so I’m wondering if this material read
better than what the finished product on film ended up being; however, that
even makes the film more frustrating because Pollack and longtime collaborator
and script cleaner-upper David Rayfiel usually do a fine job molding their
source material into workable screenplays. Here, though, it’s obvious that Random Hearts needed another round of
edits.

And so I go back to the fact that Kristin Scott-Thompson is
more interesting than Harrison Ford, yet Pollack didn’t seem to think so since
we get less of Kay’s world than Dutch’s. And what a shame, too, since Kay’s
political world is filled with great character actors like Bonnie Hunt, Richard
Jenkins, and Pollack himself in a great cameo. Pollack and Jenkins are great as
Thompson’s political advisors, and the film is at its most engaging when we get
the behind the scenes talk about things like skeletons in the closest (Pollack’s
first scene with Thompson is a winner) or how they’ve gotten a “sympathy bump”
from Thompson’s husband dying in the plane crash. Yes, these scenes are well acted
and interesting; however, like the silly police investigation, it’s still just
ancillary stuff that detracts from what should be the primary relationship
drawing us into the story.

Random Hearts is
such a disappointing step down from what Pollack had done in the mid-‘90s. I
know that Sabrina and The Firm aren’t his most revered films,
but I love them and their classical feel. Random
Hearts is just too all over the place; it’s inert in the same way that Havana is. And a lot of that blame falls
on Pollack for not instilling life into the film’s primary relationship. In
fact, Havana and Random Hearts are almost the exact same film: interesting idea,
horribly executed screenplay, aging star that seems altogether disinterested, misplaced
point of view, and a strong supporting cast that isn’t given much to do. I want
to end by bringing up Ford’s earring again, not because it’s important but
because it represents what’s wrong with Random
Hearts: it’s distracting. Everything that doesn’t work about this film is
because it’s distracting from what so obviously does work. Kay, not Dutch, is
the most interesting character. But we’re pretty much deprived of her story
because Pollack wanted to focus on Dutch’s distracting Internal Affairs
subplot. The editing is distracting because just as we’re about to get
emotionally invested, the film pulls away – keeping the viewer at arm’s length as
much as Dutch does with his partner – leaving the viewer cold and frustrated.
There was a big ‘ol cheesy romantic melodrama (like something akin to Pollack’s
The Way We Were) in here somewhere –
the kind of film I can get behind when made earnestly – but Pollack messes it
up by distracting the viewer with all kinds of elements that nearly as
interesting as he thought.

Pollack would take a
five year break – focusing more on producing and acting – before making his
final (fiction) film with 2005’s The Interpreter.

0
comments

Post a Comment

YOUR VIEWS INTRIGUE ME, AND I WISH TO SUBSCRIBE TO YOUR NEWSLETTER

"I suppose I think of film criticism the way I've heard Hebrew scholars describe their approach to the Torah: It's not about discovering dogma, it's about learning to ask meaningful questions, even if you can never fully answer them."

--Jim Emerson

"Style is supposed to express content, dammit--not disguise a lack of it! The meaning of a film is in what these images on the screen (and don't forget the sounds!) do to you while you experience them [...] If you ask me, we should stop seeing style and content as separate entities. In a good film, they're a natural unity."

-- Peet Gelderblom

"Clearly, this does not mean that Friday the 13th is more "valuable" than Jeanne Dielman [...] But, given the great many people who have seen Friday the 13th, where is the intellectual dignity in saying, "it's crap", and being done with it? Anything that has become an iconic part of popular culture is therefore inherently worthy of exploration if not automatic respect [...] If we simply throw it out with the bathwater, on the grounds that it isn't "artistic", we also throw out the possibility of ever finding out."